future of the West.
The Islamic State is not something which came into
being in the last few years. It is simply another name for
the Caliphate, a pan-national Islamic empire, tracing itself
back to the warrior (the ʻCaliphʼ, the ʻdeputyʼ) who took
charge following Mohammed’s death. That warrior, the
successor to Mohammed, led the armies of Islam to burst
forth from Arabia. Since 2014 the BBC has been
referring to “the so-called Islamic State” in Syria, as if
this is somehow a bogus concept. Eight years earlier (and
before any ordinary member of the public had heard the
phrase “Islamic State”), a Harvard professor of law
wrote a book called The Fall and Rise of the Islamic
State.^206 Since his book was written years before the
Islamic State in Syria was declared, it proves that this
concept had been known to the educated elite for many
years before. This Harvard professorʼs book is just one of
many that discuss the Caliphate, the Islamic State which
only ended in 1924 after enduring for 1300 years.^207 Rather
than being some weird idea dreamt up in the twenty-first
century by Muslims who supposedly knew nothing about
Islam, ask yourself: what legal and political institution in the
history of the world endured as long as the Islamic State
did? Communism, National Socialism, Fascism, the British
Empire, the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire did
not last as long as the Islamic State. It is no surprise that as
soon as the Caliphate was abolished in 1924 Muslims began
their efforts to bring it back.^208
To Muslims, the political and legal authority of the